FINDING MYSELF

28 June 2023

This week marks one year of being back at work since Miss A was born.

I felt on edge starting back after 6 months off with my second baby. Somehow like a duck to water I am slowly reconnecting with my professional identity. One I started carving out many years ago, well and truly before children.  I love being myself around patients which makes work a choice rather than a chore.

Almost symbolically the exact opposite has happened to my personal identity. I am consumed by the girls and  obsessed with apparently newfound interests: nap timings, food prepping, laundry, leaps, regressions, teething…

This morning my receptionist who very kindly reschedules my appointments every time one of the girls fall sick reassured me that it’s a stage of life, and she too had rattled around in the lost property box at some point.

Whilst I have been trying to find the old me I realise I’m probably not going to find her. This version of me is kinder to myself,  accepting of the mess that is every mealtime, ok to go to the park on our way home after a long day of daycare and work, grateful when things are going well and sort of ok when they’re not (my husband may laugh at the ‘sort of okay’, we’re working on it one breakdown at a time!)

Finding ME is still a work in progress but grateful to be at work and strike a balance whilst helping the girls to carve out their identities! 

Also thank you to the lovely patient who dropped off oranges from her garden, unknowingly she picked a great day!!